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<span class="post_date" title="2015-11-13">November 13, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/13/nypd-the-new-red-squad/"
rel="bookmark">NYPD: the New Red Squad</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/david-rosen/"
rel="nofollow">David Rosen</a></span> </p>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody">
<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1447347192554_4546" class=""><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/13/nypd-the-new-red-squad/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/13/nypd-the-new-red-squad/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<p>Are you being illegally surveilled by the New York Police
Department (NYPD)?</p>
<p>The <a
href="http://gothamist.com/2015/10/29/nypd_undercover_brooklyn.php"><em>Gothamist</em></a> website
recently exposed a NYPD undercover officer, “Melike Ser,” who
had been spying on Muslim students at Brooklyn College. As it
reported, three college graduates had “intimate ties” with the
officer, with “her presence during some of the most private
moments of their lives, and the fear they endured when they
learned her true identity.” No charges were brought against
anyone the agent supposedly investigated.</p>
<p>The NYPD dismissed the story. “There’s truth in the
Gothamist story, if you pick out certain facts you can say,
‘Well, this is true,’ or ‘That’s true’,” claimed John Miller,
Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and
Counter-Terrorism. “But it’s wrapped around this narrative
that there was this over-arching blanket surveillance, which
is not the case,” he claimed. He also suggested that the
undercover agent had, in April, exposed the role of two Queens
women as Islamic State terrorists by building and planning to
deploy a home-made bomb.</p>
<p>The Brooklyn College episode is but the latest example of how
the NYPD uses undercover officers, really secret police, to
investigate — and sometimes provoke through <em>agents
provocateurs</em> — illegal actions. This practice dates
back more than a half-century and is part of the establishment
of a new Red Squad and is unlikely to change anytime soon.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>
<p>In 2012, the Associated Press (AP) broke the <a
href="http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2012/NYPD-monitored-Muslim-students-all-over-Northeast">Pulitzer-Prize
winning esposé</a> on the NYPD surveillance of Muslim
throughout the Northeast. It reported that the
NYPD’s Intelligence Division Cyber Unit surveilled students
throughout the City University of New York (CUNY) system
including Brooklyn and Baruch Colleges as well as
using “secondary” undercovers operatives Hunter, CCNY, Queens
and LaGuardia colleges during at least from 2003 to 2006.</p>
<p>The NYPD surveillance activities raised a host of questions
as to their legality. The AP found that some CUNY personnel
may have shared student records with the police in violation
of the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA); if
convicted, a school could lose federal funding. In addition,
undercover cops may have violated a 1<a
href="http://www.psc-cuny.org/clarion/november-2011/nypd-spy-scandal-hits-cuny-muslim-students-target-profiling">992
agreement</a> between CUNY and the NYPD that restricted
police “to CUNY campuses, buildings and other property only
upon the request or approval of a CUNY official.”</p>
<p>More troubling, on Octoer 12<sup>th</sup>, the Third U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia, ruled to
reinstate a lawsuit, <em>Hassan v. City of New York</em>,
originally brought by a group of 11 Muslim people, businesses
and organizations that were allegedly the subject of NYPD
surveillance by its now-disbanded Demographics Unit.</p>
<p>The Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) filed the original lawsuit in June 2012; it was
dismissed in 2014. According to CCR, “the NYPD’s goal under
this program – both ambitious and chilling – was to create a
human mapping system that monitored Muslims all along the
Eastern Seaboard and beyond. No Muslim individual or entity
appears to have been beyond suspicion.” The NYPD targeted
adherents of the Muslim faith from 28 “ancestries of interest”
including Egyptian, Pakistani, Somali, Sudanese and an array
of other Asian, Middle Eastern and African ancestries along
with “American Black Muslim.”</p>
<p>In its reversal, the Third Circuit judges noted in their
60-page opinion that the NYPD’s practices recalled
now-condemned government actions from the past, “We have been
down similar roads before. Jewish-Americans during the Red
Scare, African-Americans during the civil-rights movement and
Japanese-Americans during World War II are examples that
readily spring to mind.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>
<p>In the wake of the colossal federal intelligence failures
that culminated in the September 11, 2001, attacks, the NYPD
both “federalized” and “militarized” its counter-terrorism
operations. It began working closely with the CIA, FBI and
DHS, among others federal agencies, and received a
considerable amount of military gear, including machine guns,
ammunition and armored personnel carriers, from the Pentagon
and DHS.</p>
<p>Following 9/11, four CIA operatives were embedded in the NYPD
and, in 2002, it launched a clandestine surveillance campaign
of regional Muslims and Muslim organizations through its
Demographics Unit that led to the recent Third Circuit
decision. (These activities were in violation of National
Security Act of 1947 and the 1981 Executive Order 12333 that
barred the CIA from engaging in domestic spying.) Also in
2002, it marshaled its forces against protesters of the World
Economic Forum (WEF), infiltrated various anti-globalization
organizations, including the NYC Independent Media Center, and
arrested 500 people. Nevertheless, a half-million people came
out to voice their rage, the largest protest in the city’s
history.</p>
<p>In 2004, the NYPD employed an aggressive counter-terrorism
strategy to suppress popular protest against the Republican
National Convention (RNC). It deployed its “RNC Intelligence
Squad” to conduct massive surveillance of political groups and
to arrest (some preemptively), detain and fingerprinting over
1,800 protesters, journalists, legal observers and
bystanders; in 2014, the city paid out nearly $18 million for
the unlawful arrests.</p>
<p>In 2011, the NYPD lead a massive campaign against Occupy Wall
Street that was distinguishing by the active collaboration of
the police and a host of national security agencies and
corporate representatives. The NYPD’s worked with DHS,
including ICE, the Coast Guard, the TSA’s Federal Air
Marshals, as well as the FBI, the Secret Service and U.S.
Marshals Service. According to a DHS memo, its officials were
“actively engaged with local law enforcement and trade
partners to establish contingency plans.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>
<p>The NYPD has a long history as an undercover security
service. In 1955, it established the Bureau of Special
Services (BOSS), popularly known as the “Red Squad.” Like
similar groups operating in Los Angeles, Detroit and other
cities during the Cold War, its goal was, in the words of New
York State’s chiefs of police, “to drive the pinks out of the
country.” Two undercover female police officers and numerous
FBI agents infiltrated the Communist Party (CP) and various
municipal agencies, including the schools; it even kept a file
on Dorothy Day and the <em>Catholic Worker</em> from 1955 to
1968.</p>
<p>From 1957 to ’71, the NYPD actively collaborated with the
FBI’s COINTELPRO (i.e., Counter Intelligence Program) and,
initially, targeted the CP and Puerto Rican nationalists. In
July 1959, HUAC held hearings held in New York and San Juan on
“Communist activities among Puerto Ricans in New York City and
Puerto Rico.” More then a dozen witnesses were subpoenaed;
most of the alleged communist witnesses refused to
testify. One of those who testified was Mildred Blauvelt, an
undercover BOSS officer. “I became a member of the New York
City Police Department in December of 1942, and upon entrance
into the department was assigned by them to infiltrate the
Communist Party as an undercover agent,” she revealed. Her
actual infiltration of the party is a bit unclear: “I
succeeded in doing so by becoming a member of the Communist
Party in April of 1948. I was expelled from the Communist
Party in September 1943, but gained reentrance into the party
once again in April of 1944, and stayed in the Communist Party
until my expulsion in November of 1951.”</p>
<p>In the ’60s, a BOSS undercover cop, Gene Roberts, served as
Malcolm X’s chief of security and was at the Audubon
Ballroom when Malcolm was assassinated. During the ‘60s and
‘70s, the Red Squad targeted political groups like the Black
Panthers, Yippies, Young Lords, antiwar activists and “white
hate groups.” In the mid-‘60s, it began to deploy video
surveillance that is now ubiquitous. In the wake of the first
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the NYPD
joined forces with the FBI and the CIA to fight terrorism.</p>
<p>Deeply troubling, the NYPD has violated legal agreements
limiting its surveillance powers. Over the last three
decades, it has circumvented what is known as the Handschu
Consent Decree. It is named for Barbara Handschu, an attorney
defending the Black Panthers and Abbie Hoffman, who filed suit
against the Red Squad in 1971. After nine years of
litigation, the NYPD agreed to cease investigating any
individual or group without specific information of criminal
intent; it also agreed to release secret files it kept on
250,000 New Yorkers. In 2002, the Decree was modified in the
wake of 9/11, but in 2007 the NYPD was found in violation of
the agreement due to its videotaping of public demonstrations.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> * * *</p>
<p>The attacks of 9/11 introduced the era of “war on terror” and
paramilitary policing. Now, a decade-and-a-half later, a
potential national security threat can include any
disturbance, whether political protest, civil uprising,
publicity spectacle like the pope’s visit or simply being
“Muslim,” a very ill-defined category. Mass preventive
arrests are common; undercover agents and <em>agents
provocateurs</em> are assumed to infiltrate local activist
groups; isolated incidents can rapidly metastasize; and
nonviolent actions can quickly be turned into criminal
activities.</p>
<p>NYPD conducts surveillance operation using both undercover
operatives and high-tech equipment. One of its surveillance
“toys” is a sophisticated Bell 412EP helicopter costing $10
million and acquired through a Justice Department grant. It
operates through a shell company and maintains a special FAA
“undercover” registration so it can’t be tracked. It is
equipped with sophisticated photo- and video-surveillance
capabilities that <a
href="http://www.wired.com/2015/06/fbi-not-alone-in-operating-secret-spycraft/"><em>Wired</em></a> magazine
says can capture “clear images of license plates—or the faces
of individuals—from 1,000 feet away.” The story noted that it
could even “pick up the catcher’s signals at Yankee
Stadium.” John Diazo, crew chief for the aircraft, replied,
“Obviously, we’re not looking into apartments. We don’t invade
the privacy of individuals. We only want to observe anything
that’s going on in public.” And who would know if they did?</p>
<p>Another NYPD device is known as the StingRay, an IMSI catcher
(International Mobile Subscriber Identity) that is a cell site
simulator. It appears as a cellphone tower and services as
a mobile wiretapping device and is used to capture metadata,
record the content of phone conversations and SMS text
messages.</p>
<p>And then there is the Z Backscatter Van, a mobile fortress
used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to scan for drugs
and explosives costing between $729,000 and $825,000. Two
were reportedly deployed at the 2004 Republican convention,
one on each side of streets near Madison Square Garden, to
X-rayed every vehicle that passed for explosives.</p>
<p>Over the last century, New York has witnessed innumerable
civil disturbances that can be divided into four categories:
(i) race riots (i.e, whites attacking blacks) like the 1900
riot; (ii) urban riots (i.e., blacks uprising against racist
conditions) like the 1935 Harlem riot and those in 1964, 1991
and 2013; (iii) civil disorders like the 1977 blackout that
witnessed widespread arson and the looting of over 1,500
stores (the 1965 Blackout did not result in disorder); and
(iv) mass political protests like the 2002 mobilization
against the WEF and the 2011 Occupy mobilization.</p>
<p>A violent militant protest by political activists or a riot
by African-American or other people-of-color in New York in
the near future seems unlikely. If economic conditions get
significantly worse, a relatively inconsequential act, like
the ones that sparked the riots or protests of the past, could
precipitate a very violent civil disturbance. In the face of
such a disruption, one can expect the coordinated might of the
integrated security state – with its army of undercover secret
police — rain down mercilessly.</p>
<p>Be prepared for the worst.</p>
<p><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1447347192554_4548" class=""></span></p>
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<div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>David Rosen </strong>is
the author of the forthcoming, Sex, Sin & Subversion: The
Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s
New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at <a
href="http://us.mc845.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=drosennyc@verizon.net"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:drosennyc@verizon.net">drosennyc@verizon.net</a></a>;
check out <a href="http://www.davidrosenwrites.com/">www.DavidRosenWrites.com</a>.</em>
</p>
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